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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29522286">An exercise in futility.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilostmyothersock/pseuds/ilostmyothersock'>ilostmyothersock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Body Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Medical Experimentation, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:02:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,115</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29522286</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilostmyothersock/pseuds/ilostmyothersock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Did you think it hadn’t been tried, Booker?” Booker blinks, slowly turning to face Nicky. </p><p>“What?” </p><p>“Did you really think it hadn’t been tried? That everything hadn’t been tried? Everything that woman did, every experiment she ran. None of it is new.”</p><p>TW: self-harm, medical experimentation (nothing graphic), body horror, self-hatred, suicidal ideation</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>95</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>An exercise in futility.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is based on a headcanon by @dearpatroclus on tumblr, so thank you to them! Thank you also to @socvrates for the amazing beta, and to @shaolinqueen for the brainstorming, and for the line “Maybe next time, habibi” because it crushed me and so I included it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Part 1: Booker</b>
</p><p>“Did you think it hadn’t been tried, Booker?” Booker blinks, slowly turning to face Nicky.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Did you really think it hadn’t been tried? That <em>everything</em> hadn’t been tried? Everything that woman did, every experiment she ran. None of it is new.”</p><p>“You’ve been… wait no, you haven’t been taken in the past 200 years, I would have known about it. Science has <em>changed</em>, Nicky. There’s so much that they can do now that they couldn’t do in the 1700s. You don’t know -”</p><p>Nicky says nothing. He turns to face Booker, his eyes dark.</p><p>“I would have known…” Booker tries again, losing steam when Nicky continues to look at him with a carefully blank face. His shoulders slump. “When were you taken? Where? Was it you? Was it Joe? Andy? Was it when I was in Shanghai in ‘89? Or  Rennes in ‘27? Why didn’t you tell -”</p><p>“We weren’t taken, Booker. Or at least, nothing you don’t know about.”</p><p>Booker straightens up again. “Well then how would you <em>know</em> - ?”</p><p>“I tried it.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I tried it myself.”</p><p>Booker looks at him in confusion. “What do you mean you tried it yourself?”</p><p>“I did the research myself.”</p><p>Booker knows there’s something that Nicky isn’t saying (as there tends to be with Nicky, his words always hinting at depths he won’t say) but it’s just out of reach, his mind failing to put it together.</p><p>Nicky pushes himself up off of the porch step and heads back inside, the door swinging shut behind him.</p><p>-----</p><p>
  <b>Part 2: Nile</b>
</p><p>They’re in an apartment by the Bay of Naples when Nile finds them. It’s an old property, definitely older than Nile (as most things are), and the things scattered around the house show it. The pots are old, the fireplace is well-used, and some of the clothes that Joe pulls out of the closet look like they’re from the wrong century (they just might be).</p><p>It looks innocent enough, at first. In an alcove off of the living room there’s a tall bookshelf, full to bursting. Nile hesitates. They’ve told her time and time again that what’s theirs is hers now, but these old books, clearly well-worn and often looked through, feel personal. She leans closer, hesitant to touch anything. Some of them have titles still legible on the spines. Others are too worn to read, while others still don’t appear to have anything written on the spines at all.</p><p>There are a few worn classics in Italian, English, and French that Nile recognizes.</p><p>Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Hugo, Rabelais.</p><p>There are others in languages Nile can’t read.</p><p>Curious and vaguely emboldened, Nile pulls out one of the unmarked books.</p><p>The only things she really understands are the dates on some of the pages. There are a few drawings that might have been done by Joe, but most of the book is filled with what Nile recognizes as Nicky’s hand.</p><p>She thinks it’s in Latin. It might be in Italian, but she suspects it’s too old of a form for her to read with her limited skills. Flipping through a few more pages and unable to really make out anything meaningful, she carefully closes it and puts it back on the shelf, picking up another.</p><p>The next one is much the same.</p><p>The pictures, scarce though they are, seem scientific, medical. She knows that Nicky has a medical degree - possibly more than one. Maybe he wrote something and Joe did the drawings for him.</p><p>It isn’t until the fifth book that the language starts to tend toward a recent enough form that Nile can make some things out between her recently acquired Italian skills and the Spanish she learned in high school. Between that and the obvious progress over the tomes in methodicity and organization, Nile realizes what she’s looking at.</p><p>They’re records of experiments.</p><p>She feels dread building in her stomach as she sits heavily on the couch, unable to tear her eyes away. There are a few times she needs to pull out her phone to check a translation but it becomes very clear what the experiments were about: they were experiments on immortality.</p><p>Nicky experimented on someone - and given what she knows about the immortal… community, or lack thereof? It must have been Joe or Andy or Booker.</p><p>She sits in silence, trying to understand.</p><p>Kind Nicky, gentle Nicky, very-much-the-mom-friend Nicky, had it in him to cut out pieces of his friends. It doesn’t feel right. Didn’t doctors take an oath to “do no harm”? She supposes it didn’t stop Kozak, and she knows that anything that was done would heal instantly, but the idea of Nicky taking a blade to Joe or Andy or Booker <em>willingly</em> unsettles Nile deeply.</p><p>And based on the number of books here (and Nile is sure that, with the number of properties they have around the globe, this isn’t the only stash of them), Nicky did <em>a lot</em>.</p><p>The notes are meticulous, and even with the language barrier Nile gets a pretty good idea of the extent to which Nicky went. Even though they heal, it feels <em>wrong</em>.</p><p>She hears the padding of footsteps on the stairs and she can’t help but hope that it isn’t Nicky. She isn’t sure if she can face him just yet - if she can handle how much her perception of him has changed.</p><p>She lets out a breath of relief when she sees that it’s Joe. When he sees her sitting on the couch he immediately beams at her, and she feels guilt rush through her when his face drops as he notices the book on her lap.</p><p>She shouldn’t have looked.</p><p>For a moment, he doesn’t move. Then he huffs out a breath before calling out “Tea?” and heading to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.</p><p>Nile doesn’t know if she can stomach tea.</p><p>---</p><p>When he comes back he places both teacups on the coffee table before carefully taking the book out of her hands, closing it, and putting it back on the shelf. She notices that he does it all without even looking down at the page. He keeps his gaze averted as if he can’t bear to look at it.</p><p>She’s speaking before she can stop herself. “Was it you?”</p><p>Joe freezes midway from the shelf to the couch.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Nile gestures vaguely. “The… the book. Was it you?”</p><p>Joe frowns. “What? No… I mean… Nicky wrote it. He’s the one with the medical training, you know that.”</p><p>Nile blinks. “I mean… who did he… who did he experiment on. Was it you? I just… I can’t imagine he would, on you… and <em>so much</em>, too. Even on Andy, or Booker, I...”</p><p>Joe’s expression shutters. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment before hesitantly walking the rest of the way back to the couch and sitting down beside her.</p><p>He stares down at his own hands, fiddling with one of his rings. “Nicky never touched us.”</p><p>That does not make Nile feel better. She squeezes her hands together to stop them from shaking. If he wasn’t experimenting on immortals, then that only left… “He - he must have killed them.”</p><p>Joe whips his head around to face her. “<em>What?</em>”</p><p>“I… I know I didn’t understand everything, but some of the things he did, there’s no way they made it. He was just… just killing them. For the sake of what, <em>science</em>? Nicky? I never - ”</p><p>Joe cuts her off with a quick shake of his head, taking her hand in his.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Joe, have you <em>read</em> those? Even with my shitty Italian and no medical degree I can tell that -”</p><p>“<em>No.</em>”</p><p>Nile softens. She knows denial. Nicky’s been the love of his life for 900 years. “Joe…”</p><p>Joe clears his throat uncomfortably, giving her hand a squeeze. “I’ve read them, Nile. I did the art… when I could handle it.” She waits, sensing he has more to say. “But… Nile… he didn’t hurt anybody else.” She opens her mouth, about to argue that it’s impossible when he continues, “The point was to test immortality, test how it can be… what it can do. If it can be harnessed. Testing mortals would have been pointless.”</p><p>“But you said he didn’t touch you. He clearly experimented on <em>someone</em>, Joe, he -”</p><p>“He refused to hurt anyone else.”</p><p>Nile blinks, confused, but Joe doesn’t say anything else. He lets go of her hand and goes back to playing with his rings, but Nile can see the anguish written all over his face. She reaches out a tentative hand to rest on his back, unsure how to comfort him, or even, really, what she’s comforting him <em>for</em>. </p><p>“Joe…” But then, what he said seems to settle in her mind. “He didn’t hurt anyone else.” Joe nods, doesn’t look at her. “He didn’t hurt anyone <em>else</em>,” Nile continues. She thinks she’s going to be sick. “All of that… <em>all</em> of that, he did to himself?”</p><p>Joe doesn’t respond. He doesn’t need to.</p><p>-----</p><p>
  <b>Part 3: Joe</b>
</p><p>Joe loves and hates medical breakthroughs. He loves them because, having lived for so long, it’s such an amazing thing to see things that used to cause so much suffering no longer need to. He loves how many unfathomable things have become possible.</p><p>He hates them because every time something groundbreaking is published, Nicky gets a distant look in his eyes. Then come the days of scouring the literature, the planning, the hypothesizing. Nicky sinks into a dark hole that will only get darker, and Joe has to try to press food into his hands and drag his love to bed because if he didn’t, he knows Nicky wouldn’t stop to breathe.</p><p>What Joe hates most is that working himself to the bone is hardly the worst thing that Nicky will do to himself when he gets into it.</p><p>He hates that he knows that nothing he says will dissuade Nicky from desperately destroying himself.</p><p>He hates that all he can do is wait until he sees in Nicky’s eyes that it won’t work - until he sees that Nicky knows (however much he doesn’t want to admit it) that he’s tried everything, and that continuing is pointless.</p><p>He hates that even though, in the back of his mind, Nicky knows he’s done, he will continue regardless, doing the same thing over and over, still hoping for a different outcome. He hates that all he can do is pull the notebook out of Nicky’s trembling hands, press a kiss to his forehead, and brush back his sweaty hair before putting a hand under his elbow and helping him to his feet.</p><p>“Maybe next time, habibi. For now, sleep.”</p><p>-----</p><p>
  <b>Part 4: Andy</b>
</p><p>Healing is exhausting. The human body (even the immortal one) needs fuel. It needs rest.</p><p>It isn’t meant to be taken apart over and over, no matter how seamlessly the skin grows back.</p><p>After she walks in to find Nicky focused over a piece of his own liver, a frenzied, desperate look in his eyes for the umpteenth time, his cheeks gaunt and his face pale, she realizes the best and worst part of the progression of humanity is science.</p><p>It’s not the first time he’s gotten like this, and she’s sure that it won’t be the last.</p><p>She knows that Nicky carries guilt. She knows that horrors from his first life still haunt him in his dreams, and that he still sees himself as responsible for the atrocities committed centuries ago at Jerusalem.</p><p>She suspects that, in everything that he does, a part of Nicky is still trying to atone - a part of him still sees himself as owing penance.</p><p>She suspects that, in the deepest part of his heart, Nicky hates himself a little</p><p>She suspects that this will never really change..</p><p>She <em>knows</em> that no amount of pleading, of Joe’s tears, of reminders that nothing has ever worked, will stop Nicky from desperately hoping that this time, <em>this time</em> he can pull something out of himself that will save the world.</p><p>She has offered, Joe has offered, every time Nicky is convinced that something is different, now - that humankind has what it needs, to make it work this time - to be the sample, to be the source.</p><p>Nicky took a scalpel to Andy’s skin once with a quivering hand before leaving to throw up.</p><p>“You’ve cut me in training before. You don’t need to keep hurting yourself.”</p><p>“That’s different.”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“It’s <em>different</em>.”</p><p>“<em>How?</em>”</p><p>“What if… what if it’s the <em>last time</em> and I did it <em>on purpose</em>?”</p><p>“What if it’s <em>your</em> last time?”</p><p>Nicky turns away without a word, but Andy hears the <em>“it wouldn’t matter”</em> all the same.</p>
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